by Chris Bostic
“Should we go get ‘em?” Toothless asked, edging toward the truck.
“We should call the cops,” Vince deadpanned. “He’s dead.”
CHAPTER 33
“I’m driving.” Vince pointed for Toothless to head to the passenger side. Once he took off in that direction, Vince whispered to me, “You still believe him?”
“Yeah. You?”
“I do. Just checking.” He touched my arm. “I saw you lock up back there. I shouldn’t have put you through that.”
I didn’t want to talk about it, so I told the truth in as few words as possible. “It worked out.”
“So far. Now let’s go find the others.” Vince went to the open door and offered me a helping hand, which became two on my backside to boost me up into the delivery truck.
“Not a lot of room in here,” I remarked, seeing only two bucket seats in the cab. Having no interest in being that close to Toothless, I went to try to squeeze into the narrow gap between the seats. I could have fit, but Vince insisted on sharing the driver’s seat with me. I didn’t argue.
We rolled through the open gate and didn’t bother closing it behind us.
“So, um, what about the, uh, dead guy?” Toothless asked as we crept at idle speed down the driveway.
“You remember the two soldiers on the boat,” I said. “It’s the shorter, bigger one.”
I could tell he wanted to ask me more, but he kept his lips pinched shut. So I asked, “Do you have a cell? We need to call the cops.”
“I do. Lost mine with the boat, but I got my daddy’s now.” He rolled down his window and stuck his head out, gazing back toward the gate. “The reception’s terrible out here. Sometimes we kin get a signal out by the hard road. We could try.”
He fished an older iPhone with a cracked screen out of his pants pocket. The background picture was reduced to a colored mosaic, with so many little glass shards that I thought a person might bleed out if they tried to swipe the screen.
“Just keep going,” I told Vince. “We’ll get the others, then come back.”
“About that…” Vince scratched his scalp. “They’re not gonna come to the truck. We should yell for ‘em.”
“Not you,” I told Toothless. “You just watch the phone and see if you get a signal to pop up. I’ll yell across you.”
“Might as well start now,” Vince said, as the truck crept along a tree-lined road. “As soon as I turn the headlights on.”
Toothless didn’t object. Vince stopped long enough to find the switch, then we proceeded to call out names at random.
We’d yell a couple names, each of us out of our own window, then stop the truck to listen. No one replied.
“Maybe they caught a ride,” Toothless said during one of the pauses. “That’s what we figur’d when y’all didn’t come out.”
“I doubt it. We hardly heard a car on that road,” I replied. “Like all day.”
“It ain’t busy, but there’s folks on it. You just cain’t hear ‘em down in the hole.”
“Or up on the hillside,” I mumbled.
Vince took his foot off the brakes, and we started a slow roll again. We went back to calling out names, yelling until my throat hurt. There was no sign of them, and none of the distillery.
“Long damn road,” Vince muttered when we stopped to listen again.
“It’s back in there,” Toothless said. “That’s why we don’t want folks to know ‘bout it ‘til we’re open.”
I took a break from yelling to rest my throat. A cool drink of water never sounded better, and I’d been wanting one for hours.
At that point, I was ready to give up and go to town. Or at least head back to the top of the hill to call the cops, and let them do the searching.
My eyelids drooped. I leaned against Vince. He kept a hand on the wheel. The other rested on my thigh. He squeezed a little encouragement into me and eased off the brakes.
I looked down at his hand and smiled. Weakly.
“We’ll find ‘em,” he whispered.
“Thanks, babe.”
He raised an eyebrow and I realized my mistake. Or not really. Exhaustion and drunkenness had similar effects. They both loosened the tongue, and sometimes you said things better kept to yourself. But, for me at least, it was always truthful.
When I looked up, I noticed Toothless eyeing Vince’s hand out of the corner of his eyes. Not maliciously like the creeper, but curious. Deservedly so, I thought. But I was too tired to launch back into some guilt-plagued thoughts. All that mattered was finding the others and getting out of there. Then another question came to mind.
“So what were you doing banging around in the office?” I asked. He looked at me curiously. “Upstairs in the museum. The fourth floor.”
“You heard that? So you was in there.”
“Yeah. So….”
“Just makin’ a list o’ what we need. I ain’t been up there much, so Julian was showing me all the good stuff in there while we waited for Daddy.”
“Makes sense, I guess.”
“He kinda wants to keep it the way it used to be, for the, uh, museum, but we kinda need to fix the windas first.”
“No shit,” I replied. “Better do that quick before the whole place comes down.”
“Probably should’ve done that first,” Vince added. “The new part is nice, but it won’t be if the rest collapses.”
“Enough chit chat,” I said. “Let’s keep yelling.”
Vince pressed the brake pedal partway. We crawled down the hill, shouting names. Urging them to come out if they were hiding.
The road leveled out toward the bottom. In the distance, the smokestack stretched above the dark hulk of the larger building and the tree line.
“It’s a deep valley,” I remarked, thinking back to climbing the hill to get to the gate. The memory alone practically made me out of breath.
“Stay to the right.” Toothless pointed at a short building in the middle of the road.
“The loading dock,” Vince said. “We were at the end.”
A pair of taller, square buildings nestled behind the bottling warehouse, up against the far tree line.
“More rack houses,” I noted. “Hadn’t seen those before.”
“There’s a dozen out ‘ere. All full, ‘cept for one we sold to help pay for the remodel.” Toothless gazed out the open window. “We’ve been samplin’ wha’s left to find the better ones.”
“Good luck. We tried a barrel.” Vince winked at me. “Thirsty?”
“Not for that straight from the barrel bullshit.” Though my stomach lurched at the thought, I said, “Maybe a bottle.”
“We should take home a souvenir or two from the bottling line.” Vince looked at Toothless for confirmation, but he was back to fantasizing about his budding operation.
“Most of them new places ain’t got distillate ready. There ain’t nothing aged. But this place…that was some luck.”
I couldn’t see much lucky about it, but I understood his sentiments. Almost all the craft distilleries we had toured didn’t have any of their product ready, except for maybe a gin or vodka since that could come straight off the still into a bottle. Most new places had just started distilling their own bourbon and wouldn’t have anything suitably aged for three or four more years.
We rolled past the loading docks and stopped at the end of the building. Across the new parking lot, damp asphalt gleaming softly in the moonlight, we faced the new reception area.
“Now what?” I asked. “We didn’t find ‘em.”
“Back to the top?” Vince said with a shrug. “Make the phone call?”
He took his foot off the brake and coasted across the parking lot. The tires squealed on the pavement as Vince cut the wheel to make a U-turn in the middle of the lot.
“Hold up. You wanna show me the body?” Toothless said. He opened the glove box and pulled out a flashlight. His other hand went to the door latch.
“Not so fast.” Vince leaned across
me to eyeball him.
I shook my head. “I’m not going back in there.”
“We’re turnin’ around and heading back,” Vince declared.
“Don’t y’all think you should put up or shut up?” Toothless said. “A fellar’s dead in my place. I’ll go give it a quick look see, an’ be right back.”
Vince stared him down. I looked away, weaving my fingers together and dropping them into my lap. Vince laid a hand across mine.
“Well?” Vince asked me.
I didn’t have time to answer. Toothless popped the door and took off at a jog toward the building.
“Son of a bitch!” Vince opened his own door and rolled out.
I sat there torn between sitting alone in the middle of the parking lot, or heading back into a building I never wanted to set foot in again.
“Grace?” Vince paused at the foot of the truck, looking up to me. “You comin’?”
“I can’t.”
“I can’t let him fuck up the crime scene.” He leaned away but refused to go.
“Just go,” I said. “I’ll lock myself in here.”
“Positive?”
“No.” I shook my head to clear the cobwebs. “Yes?”
Vince reached his arms out to me. “Hop down.”
“No. You need to hurry,” I said. “I’ll slow you down.”
“Dammit. Okay.” Vince closed the door and took off. Over his shoulder, he shouted, “Roll up the windows and lock it.”
CHAPTER 34
I hadn’t sat there for more than a minute before the curiosity got the better of me. Not to mention a healthy dose of abandonment anxiety.
“Shit,” I mumbled, slouched low in the driver’s seat. I felt like a little old lady watching the road through the steering wheel. But not overconfident in my abilities. Terrified, rather, of anything and everything.
The perspiration came back in a big way. Cold sweat, beading up on my forehead and the small of my back. Quick shallow breaths.
“Dammit,” I said and leaned over to unlock the door. Better to be on the move than sitting alone in the dark. Or so I thought.
I took a long glance around the parking lot and surrounding area before reaching for the door handle. Not that I could see very far. The woods were darker than midnight. The bottling warehouse and load docks appeared deathly quiet. The new reception area sat there as unwelcoming as ever. But, still, I went to it.
I fast walked across the parking lot to the door. Gently pulling it open, I peeked through the crack into the lobby.
A flashlight bobbed in the far hallway, through the double doors. If not for that, I wouldn’t have been able to see anything.
It was debate time, yet again. I could stand outdoors with the partial moonlight, right by the door, or commit to going into the lobby. No way was I going down the hall to the tasting room.
Inside seemed safer. More out of public view, not that there was any public to worry about. Or so I thought.
I stepped into the lobby and let the door close. I pressed my back up against the door.
“Vince,” I called out weakly, not really wanting to be heard.
I caught voices from down the hallway. I closed my eyes as if that would help me hear better. Instead, a picture of the fallen soldier popped immediately to mind.
I imagined a crumpled up figure, blood leaking from his head onto the tile. Vince and Toothless standing over him, smiling from ear to ear, oddly enough. Toothless kicked the body and they both burst out laughing. Vince slapped Toothless on his back like they were best buddies, then he took a turn at kicking the body. Then they exchanged high-fives.
“What the fuck?” I muttered, feeling my stomach turn, even though it couldn’t have been any more ridiculous.
Though impossible, the images got even weirder. Toothless knelt next to the body and wet his fingers with the blood. I watched him paint random letters on the walls. Then Vince dipped his fingers into the blood and drew heavy marks on his cheeks like a football player wearing eye black.
A commotion snapped me out of it.
The flashlight shook wildly, spraying light all over the hallway. The beam strobed, pointing randomly. Voices raised.
The walls shook.
Toothless yelled.
I froze, still groggy from the dreams.
The shouts came again. No words, just a jumble of pirate speak, replete with grunts and roars and anger.
“What are they doing?” I shoved off the door, taking a couple tentative steps toward the hallway.
The flashlight winked out.
A dark figure crashed against the double doors, glass shattering into the lobby.
I recoiled, settling back on my haunches to run, but otherwise frozen in place.
Vince groaned. A deep voice, not his, shouted expletives. Crazy, angry talk about killing.
Toothless whimpered.
The flashlight came back on, and I found Toothless sprawled through the broken door, halfway out into the lobby.
“Fuck,” I whispered, then found the strength to yell, “Vince!”
The walls shook again as bodies collided. With Toothless down, that meant only one thing. The damn soldier had come to life!
I hunkered back down, unable to move. Unable to process the events.
When walls shook again, bodies crashing, fists thumping, I knew what that meant. Vince was in trouble.
I started out for the hallway at a veritable crawl. Forcing myself to take every slow, deliberate step. Willing myself to get there. Listening for a voice, but all I heard was grunting, grumbling, groaning.
Leave it to Vince to curse clearly.
“Motherfucker,” he bellowed, and roared, though not like normal. He sounded hurt.
The floor shook along with the thump of bone on the floor. Like the soldier had sounded when Vince had toppled him.
He got him again.
Only he hadn’t. The groan I heard definitely came from Vince, followed by the thump of a foot into a midsection.
“Shit!”
I regained my speed, closing the distance to the door. I stopped at a motionless Toothless and found myself staring down the hall at the back of a soldier.
The other one! I thought he was the decent one!
Vince had crumpled to the ground. The bastard brought a foot back to kick him again, completely oblivious to me.
I spotted the longer end of the broken umbrella up against the wall, between me and the thug. I was no linebacker. Rather than try to shove into him, I dove for it.
The soldier spun around mid-kick.
“You?” His eyes closed to slits. An evil grin split his face, accentuated by a broken beam of light. “The other girl might’ve got away, but I’m gonna have fun with you.”
“The hell you are,” I said, holding the fabric end of the umbrella away from me like a cattle prod. I’m sure it was far less impressive since I squatted up against the wall like a mouse.
He stalked over, stepping on Vince’s sprawled wrist in the process. That caused Vince to shake, but he didn’t stir.
The soldier didn’t pay him any attention other than a derisive sneer. He picked up the flashlight, brandishing it like a club, and came straight for me, malice dripping.
I rolled to the side, coming up on a knee, holding the pitiful umbrella shard. At least it had a sharp, broken end.
He just laughed. Deep. Evil.
“Back off, soldier boy.”
“Shit,” he scoffed.
He faked a charge. I tensed up, lashing out with the stick. The fabric fluttered, which only served to make him laugh louder. That pissed me off.
Pushing against the wall with my back, now literally a couple paces from the dead soldier, I straightened up to my full height.
“I’ll do you like we did him,” I growled.
“You and what army?” He sneered. “That was no damn way to treat my boy. You’re gonna get it, bitch.”
I saw Vince stir behind him. He wasn’t fully conscious yet.
Far from it. But if I could buy some time, I thought I might have a chance.
“He got everything he deserved.”
“So will you.”
“I’m fucking deadly with this thing,” I said, hacking at thin air with the stick.
He stepped fast to me, fist raised to strike. I went to duck, stepping backwards, and my traction slipped on the dead man’s blood. My foot flew out, dropping me to a knee.
My knee cap roared with pain. I wondered if the thing had split in two, but I should have been thankful. The thug’s punch had swung wide when I slipped.
He regained his balance, pulling back his arm back for another punch, grinning madly. The flashlight shaking equally wildly in his other hand. Disorienting.
I pushed the fear down, craving the adrenaline spike.
I forced myself to stand, favoring the knee, but knowing from my classes that my best chance to duck and strike back was from both feet.
I balanced my weight on the balls of my feet, my right knee screaming in protest. I took my eyes off him long enough to check Vince. That was a mistake.
The bastard charged. I spun to the side, stabbing with the umbrella as I went. It caught his shoulder, eliciting a cry of pain. But he caught me better, right on the ribs with his shoulder, sending me tumbling down the hall.
I rolled to all fours just in time to see him reset and rush. So I flipped again, onto my back, as a kick swung wide. He hit the wall and bounced off, giving me a chance to get to a fighting crouch again.
A shadowy blur slammed into him from behind, knocking the thug into me. His weight pressed against me like a truck, sending me reeling backwards.
We crashed into the ground, him on top of me. The umbrella embedding itself in his abdomen, the flat tip pressing into my side before it slipped past to the hard floor. His weight crushed me; the floor driving the umbrella home.
I freaked. I screamed my head off, but ran out of air with the thug pressing on my chest.
Vince threw him off me.
Once freed, I rolled over and went full psycho, ripping the umbrella out of the thug’s stomach and jabbing him again in the torso.